Brexit leader Nigel Farage mocked Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after over 1,200 illegal migrants crossed the English Channel just a week after the PM brazenly attempted to claim success in stopping the boats.
Last Monday, in a surprise visit to Dover — the area of England where tens of thousands of illegal boat migrants are brought ashore by the UK Border Force — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tried to claim in a speech that the reason why illegal crossings of the Channel were down in comparison to the Mediterranean into Europe was a direct result of “result of actions” implemented by his administration.
Responding to the speech, Nigel Farage noted that the real reason the people-smuggler-operated boats had ceased was merely a result of the prohibitively windy conditions in the Channel. Mr Farge went on to predict, merely by looking at the weather forecast that the boats would once again set sail from the migrant camps built up along the French coastline by the end of the week.
Weatherman-in-chief Farage’s predictions held true, with 87 migrants crossing on Saturday, 616 on Sunday, and 545 on Monday.
“When we get conditions without that northeasterly wind when we get relative calm they’re coming in just the same numbers they were last year,” the GB News presenter said from a boat in the Channel on Monday.
The Prime Minister arrives in Dover and says ‘Look at me I’m wonderful, the numbers coming have been reduced significantly’ and as we can see from the last two days that is not the case. We’ve now got normal summer weather and I would anticipate over the course of the next couple of months, I’d be surprised if we didn’t see 10,000 [migrant landings].”
So far this year, there have been nearly 9,000 illegals recorded as crossing the Channel from France, compared to around 10,000 at this point last year, which turned out to be a record year for boat migration, with over 45,000 illegally entering the country.
With the government’s primary deterrence plan of sending Channel migrants to the East African nation of Rwanda for their asylum claims to be assessed — rather than being put up in hotels across Britain — still being held amid legal challenges from open borders activists, Sunak has instead said that the government will seek to house migrants in floating barges off the English cost.
Sunak said last week that the government had purchased two barges, which will be able to house some 500 migrants a piece. Downing Street also said that they plan to house around 3,7oo alleged asylum seekers in former military sites at Wethersfield and Scampton by the Autumn.
This will only make a small dent in the number of migrants being housed in hotels accross the country, with upwards of 50,000 migrants being put up at the expense of the taxpayer.
Commenting on the futility of the latest scheme from the Conservatives, Farage said from the Channel as a Border Force vessile bringing hundreds of migrants ashore pased by: “Rishi it’s a barge full already today”.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.